Recent content by mopc

If the Sunlight lets say would go off, exactly how long would astronomers on Earth still see sunlight reflected on the surface of Mercury, Venus, Mars, the asteroids, Jupiter Saturn, etc.? I mean Sun goes dark at 0:00 from the point of view of Earth-based observers. At that exact moment, if...

Well two years too late but thank you for the reply qraal

The other day I was watching this old Disney movie from the 1950s called Man in Space, specifically a part when they speculate what life would be like on the other planets of our Solar System. The speculation of life on Jupiter showed a cartoon of a rocky planet with a normal surface and...

"Numerical example with units: If 5 amperes of current flow, which means the movement of charged particles at rate of 5 coulombs per second, and if these charged particles are being displaced across a potential difference of 10 volts, then power is being delivered at a rate of 50 watts, which...

So here's what I think electrical power is. An copper wire, for instance, has normally a bunch of atoms with mutually cancelling opposing charges: ++--+++--+-++---+++--+---+++--+-+++--+++--+-++---+++--+---+++--+-+++--+++--+-++---+++--+---+++--+-+++--+++--+-++---+++--+---+++--+-+ If you...

Yes but the electrons never actually leave the copper wire's atoms! Othewise we'd end up with a bunch of electronless atoms. What then "feeds" an electric device? Charge?

And what are "charges"? Just a property of the electrons, some kind of inherent information they just possesses and is made of nothing. Right?

No no, I mean we can better frame, I suppose, IMHO, the problem of picturing electricity if we think of it as information. I know its not easy, but electricty is not like water, there is no actual current. Water is H2O being moved from place to place. Electricty is not electrons or any particles...

OK the water through pipe model is quite helpful. But I would like to illustrate the matter a little further. For instance, our classic copper wide. Its made of copper atoms, plus impurities which can be ignored for the moment. A copper atom contains 29 electrons, distributed in four layers...

Thank you all for the replies! I've been having time constraints to reply. But one main question is in my mind: if free electrons are jumping from atom to atom, then at some point some atoms will start running out of electrons? If the elements' chemical properties are defined by the amount of...

So I have these huge doubts on the deep nature of the force we refer to as "electricity" or "electric current" in our daily lives. I want to know exactly what it is and most online resources are very circular (electricity is electric current which is electric fields which is electricity...